Prophecy, politics & the poetic imagination

PUBLISHED
August 17, 2025

KARACHI:

To attend for a saviour is to inhabit a paradox — the place passivity masks longing, and hope suspends time. This situation resists simple categorisation: it’s neither purely mystical nor wholly political, neither naïve religion nor mere deferral. At its core lies a elementary rigidity between the insufferable current and an imagined horizon — one which guarantees not simply change, however transformation. This horizon could also be divine or secular, collective or intimate, summary or vividly embodied. The determine awaited might by no means arrive; but the act of ready continues to form our goals, outline our silences, and hang-out the thresholds of our turning into.

Walter Benjamin reminds us that “the Messiah comes not solely because the redeemer, he comes because the subduer of Antichrist.” This duality — redeemer and destroyer — reveals the messianic determine as not only a bearer of peace, however a power of historic rupture. Benjamin additional warns that even “the lifeless is not going to be secure from the enemy if he wins,” insisting that the duty of hope is as a lot about redeeming the previous as anticipating the longer term. Franz Kafka, together with his paradoxical readability, wrote: “The Messiah will come solely when he’s not needed… on the final day.” This deferral of arrival mirrors the way in which hope typically stays simply past attain. But Ernst Bloch distinguished between false hope that enervates and “concretely real hope” that fortifies the soul. And maybe Che Guevara captured the moral cost of such hope in its most radical kind when he exhorted: “Be reasonable, demand the not possible!”

Such ready, then, will not be a singular or static expertise — it emerges from an online of human wants, histories, and narratives. Beneath its numerous varieties lies a layered structure of emotion, ideology, and perception. These dimensions might differ of their supply or articulation, however they’re all animated by the identical internal ache: the craving for one more presence to enter the scene of absence, to change the course of what appears unchangeable.

Psychological and existential want

People crave order, redemption, and that means, particularly within the face of struggling or chaos. Ready for a saviour externalises hope — putting the burden of decision onto one other imagined presence. This impulse displays a profound existential rigidity: the craving to be rescued versus the phobia of being finally alone and answerable for one’s salvation. The eager for an exterior saviour turns into a proxy for confronting inside fragmentation. It isn’t merely romanticism however an ontological starvation — a necessity deeply embedded within the very situation of being human.

Political and social operate

Ready for a redeemer typically turns into a instrument of ideology or management. It urges inaction within the face of injustice, whispering that change is at all times on the horizon however by no means within the second. Political regimes and establishments have lengthy exploited this impulse, urging residents to attend for the revolution, the chief, the subsequent election. The narrative of an impending saviour turns into a technique of deferral — pushing justice, reform, or transformation right into a nebulous future.

Nevertheless, this identical ready also can mobilise resistance. The picture of a coming change sustains hope, fortifies solidarity, and retains oppressed communities enduring by way of ache. In some instances, the determine of the awaited one capabilities like a placeholder for collective will, anchoring revolutionary creativeness. Thus, the messianic turns into double-edged: it may be opium that dulls or oxygen that sustains, relying on how it’s interpreted and held.

Spiritual and mythic archetype

The awaited one emerges as a mythic fixed throughout cultures and epochs. From Christ to the Mahdi, Maitreya to Kalki, traditions in every single place are haunted by the promise of a ultimate redeemer. In accordance with thinkers like Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade, such figures will not be merely spiritual innovations however archetypes — expressions of the psyche’s deep eager for order, justice, and transcendence.

These messianic narratives will not be passive fantasies. They’re containers for ethical and metaphysical longing — tales of steadiness restored, injustice defeated, concord regained. On this sense, ready turns into not inaction however ritualised hope. It’s an embodied narrative construction, enacted in prayer, poetry, and political creativeness alike.

Romanticism, sure — however within the Classical Sense

Within the classical Romantic custom, the act of ready positive factors its personal worth. Romanticism privileged longing over fulfilment, the chic over the rational, the journey over the vacation spot. On this sense, ready itself turns into significant — not merely as a method to an finish, however as a state of heightened consciousness.

To attend is to be totally current in a single’s craving, to recognise the sacred in incompletion. The awaited one turns into much less an answer and extra a mirror, reflecting our deepest needs. Thus, the romanticism of the awaited determine will not be naïve, however tragic-hopeful — a mode of tolerating and meaning-making.

Trendy critique

Trendy philosophers and activists have mounted severe critiques of the saviour complicated. Figures like Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Angela Davis have warned towards ready as a type of disempowerment. The mantra “we’re those we’ve been ready for” rejects the deferral of company, insisting that change should emerge from the collective self, not an exterior redeemer.

Derrida’s idea of “the messianic with no messiah” captures this shift. It speaks to a radical openness towards the longer term — an moral readiness to be remodeled — with out clinging to the picture of a selected saviour. Right here, the determine of the awaited one dissolves, however the impulse towards justice and alter stays.

The Awaited One in literature

Literature has lengthy been the fireside the place mythic and philosophical flames burn collectively, the place personal longing and public historical past meet within the type of picture, rhythm, and paradox. The determine of the awaited one — without delay eschatological and existential — finds one in every of its most poignant and difficult expressions within the work of two poets: Forugh Farrokhzad and Jaun Elia. Whereas earlier thinkers and poets comparable to Iqbal imagined the awaited one as an ethical and non secular crucial, Farrokhzad and Elia place the determine beneath the sharp lens of recent disillusionment, forging from their distinct poetics two radically divergent critiques of messianic hope.

In Farrokhzad’s poem “Somebody Who Is Not Like Anybody” (kasi keh mesl-e hichkas nist), the awaited one is neither divine nor doctrinal. She frames her complete imaginative and prescient by way of the harmless however understanding eyes of a kid. This baby doesn’t watch for a Mahdi or a Christ however for a determine of intimacy, dignity, and quiet transformation. The poem lists what this awaited one is not: he’s not like the daddy, not like Yahya, not just like the mom. On this sequence of negations, Farrokhzad destabilises conventional relational archetypes, refusing inherited roles.

But what emerges will not be absence however potential — the awaited one, the poem insists, can do issues nobody else does. He can learn arduous phrases. He can subtract a thousand from twenty million. He can purchase issues on credit score. He can distribute Pepsi and hospital numbers. These banal gestures shimmer with the poet’s genius: Farrokhzad displaces the messianic from the heavens to the road nook. The awaited one is neither supernatural nor victorious — he’s the one who understands programs, who has entry, who can navigate bureaucracies and fundamental wants.

The tone right here is revolutionary in its restraint. There isn’t a thunderclap of prophecy, no eschaton; as a substitute, there’s mild insistence. Farrokhzad’s saviour is constructed from the supplies of this world. The kid’s creativeness will not be naïve — it’s fiercely exact. Farrokhzad’s awaited one is, in essence, a dream of dignity reconstituted within the aftermath of social trauma. He’s an moral determine who has no miracle to carry out aside from restoring fractured dailiness. The poem, due to this fact, turns into a quiet theological coup: Farrokhzad trades metaphysics for materials justice, however retains the sacred tone of longing.

Thus, Farrokhzad transforms absence into moral creativeness. Her awaited one might by no means arrive in a grand sense, however she goals nonetheless — and thru that dreaming, constructs a world price saving. The tone is tender but defiant, childlike but visionary. She rejects messianic spectacle, however not the correct to hope.

If Farrokhzad’s voice is the quiet reimagining of presence, Jaun Elia’s is the sardonic dirge for presence itself. In one in every of his most philosophically charged couplets, Elia writes:

Woh jo na āne wālā hai nā, us se mujh ko mat̤lab thā / Āne wāloṅ se kyā mat̤lab — āte haiṅ, āte hoṅge (That one who will not be going to return — it was he that I cared about. / What do I’ve to do with those that come? They arrive; they’ll come.)

This line encapsulates Elia’s radical anti-messianism. The saviour is significant exactly as a result of he’s absent. The act of ready turns into, in Elia’s arms, a psychological theatre of deferral — not as a result of we imagine in arrival, however as a result of we want the phantasm. The poet exposes a deep fact of the human situation: we connect worth to what stays simply out of attain. Arrival is banal; it closes the loop. Non-arrival sustains the parable, nourishes want, and preserves the chic distance between hope and its object.

Not like Farrokhzad, whose tone holds ache and chance in a form of luminous suspension, Elia’s tone is irreverent, ironic, and sometimes merciless. His awaited one is a spectre — conjured not from perception, however from absence. There isn’t a tenderness, solely razor-sharp scepticism. The place Farrokhzad seeks to restore the world by way of re-imagined hope, Elia seeks to unmask it — to point out that our eager for salvation is usually a refusal to face the vacancy of the current.

This isn’t to say that Elia lacks emotion — quite the opposite, his poetry is saturated with loss, disillusionment, and mental despair. However he by no means offers this despair the crutch of transcendence. His awaited one by no means comes — and this non-arrival will not be a disappointment, however a metaphysical situation. Elia’s messianic is an infinite postponement, a paradoxical affirmation of futility that turns into, surprisingly, a type of honesty.

Comparative reflection: two poetics of longing

Farrokhzad and Elia dramatise two radically completely different responses to the collapse of conventional messianic perception. Farrokhzad channels this collapse into a brand new ethics of presence — the place ready is infused with care, creativeness, and earthly justice. She holds onto longing not as a weak point however as a radical act of reconstruction. Her awaited one is reconfigured by way of secular compassion.

Elia, against this, doesn’t reconstruct; he demolishes. He doesn’t provide an alternate saviour — he questions the very grammar of salvation. His tone is that of somebody who has seen an excessive amount of, who refuses to misinform himself. For Elia, the saviour issues solely as a result of he by no means arrives. His poetry will not be about deferred redemption, however concerning the publicity of our dependence on deferral itself.

Collectively, these two voices — one Persian, one Urdu; one marked by hope, the opposite by irony — articulate the dialectic of recent ready. Farrokhzad lifts the ruins of theology and builds small altars of kindness. Elia units the ruins ablaze, revealing the absurd structure of longing. Each, of their means, protect the sacred rigidity between expectation and abandonment.

The Awaited as mirror

The awaited one, as seen by way of these poets, will not be at all times a divine emissary. Typically he’s a projection of our wants, a critique of these wants. Typically, he’s a query we refuse to reply. In Farrokhzad’s poem, he’s the tender silhouette of dignity glimpsed by way of the eyes of a war-scarred baby. In Elia’s, he’s the absent cypher of a longing that mocks itself even because it persists.

To attend, then, will not be at all times to imagine. It may be to think about in any other case, to bear witness, to chuckle, to withstand. The awaited one turns into, ultimately, not a saviour from with out, however a mirror held as much as our most persistent human situation: the hope that somebody, someplace, will make sense of all of it.

And so, we wait — not for the tip, however for the that means cast within the act of ready itself.

Aftab Husain is a Pakistan-born and Austria-based poet in Urdu and English. He teaches South Asian literature and tradition at Vienna College

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